Real Marine Reveals Which Marine Corps Movie Is the Most Accurate

Part of the appeal of war and military movies has to do with the fact that they’re often based on real-life events and the way real-life situations are portrayed. Regardless of the excessive carnage that some movies are obligated to depict, the military genre is very popular across generations. But how exactly real are they? Former Marine Corps special operations team leader Elliot Ackerman offers his valuable perspective.

Ackerman’s resume speaks for itself. The former service member was part of the Marine Raiders group as well as a CIA operative for covert operations. Since retiring, he has followed a writing career, winning several awards in the field. The winner of a Silver Star, Purple Heart and Bronze Star has enough experience to validate whether Hollywood’s most important military films are realistic or not.

The former soldier appeared in a video for Insider, where he went through cinema’s exemplary record in depicting the Marine Corps. He evaluates shows like Generation Kill as well as Barry, and finds films like The Marine and Rules of Engagement to be less realistic than others. When it comes to most realistic Marine Corps films, Ackerman mentions Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men as the ones that best capture the tone. He rates them as 10/10 in terms of accuracy.

Full Metal Jacket heavily focuses on the training of new recruits under the leadership of a ruthless drill instructor played by R. Lee Ermey, the late actor who had been an instructor at some point in his life. Ackerman says the following:

“Today it isn’t quite as brutal and profanity-laced, but I can certainly imagine in 1967 that there was. The Marine Corps is an elite fighting force, but inevitably there are some Marines who can struggle with height and weight standards. This movie really went to great pains to get everything exactly right.”

When talking about A Few Good Men, Ackerman indicates that the conflict about a high-ranking officer being court-martialed is realistically portrayed:

“A Few Good Men is a movie that kind of deals with these much larger themes, about the role of military culture inside of a democracy, and I think that conflict is very realistic, and extremely effectively portrayed. This one is so iconic, I got to give it a 10 out of 10. I mean, maybe there are some quibbles on the margins, but I think what A Few Good Men is saying is very realistic.”

The Most Realistic Military Movie Is Not Exactly the Best of All

Ackerman has a great point in naming Full Metal Jacket and A Few Good Men as accurate in terms of how they depict the military world, even though one of them isn’t a war movie and the other one focuses on the inside dynamics of military preparation. The most compelling aspect of Kubrick’s movie lies in the psychological aspect of what happens before you go to war. Reiner’s spends much of its running time in a courtroom.

If we were to unite the war and military genres into one, it is hard to top Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, which many consider the best war movie of all time. Though it provides a raw look at the Vietnam War, and doesn’t hide the negative undertones, it also offers an interesting look at the emotional fragility of military figures. The reason why Ackerman probably doesn’t include Coppola’s epic is that the film focuses on the U.S. Army rather than the Marine Corps, and not because it doesn’t stand beside these other gems.

Source: Insider (via YouTube)